Contemplating God

If God is good, why is there so much pain in the world? Why does He let children suffer, wars rage, and hearts break? For centuries, believers and skeptics alike have wrestled with this question. The God of the Bible is described as all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good. Why doesn’t He stop evil?

This post explores what Scripture and many Christian thinkers reveal about how one of God’s greatest gifts–free will–granted humanity the freedom to love or reject Him. 

The God of the Bible is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), omnibenevolent (entirely good), and sovereign (in control of history). If that is true, why does evil exist? Some conclude that either God is not good or that He does not exist at all. But Scripture paints a different picture: a God who chose to limit His control in one profound way, by giving us free will.

From the beginning, God set before humanity the freedom to choose. He didn’t program us to obey automatically; He invited us to love Him freely. But love always carries the risk of rejection.

• I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live… (Deuteronomy 30:19)
• And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve… But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)
• “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Hosea 6:6
• And Elijah came to all the people, and said, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” 1 Kings 18:21

Each verse echoes the same truths: love cannot be forced. God desires a willing relationship with Him. 

God’s commandments aren’t chains but expressions of love. Jesus said, ‘If you love me, keep my commandments’(John 14:15). John writes that ‘His commands are not burdensome’ (1 John 5:3). True love expresses itself through trust and obedience. Yet even as God longs for our love, He allows us to disobey, holding us accountable to the choices we make.

• Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Romans 6:16)
• Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing. (Ecclesiastes 12:13–14)
• For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:10) 
• Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20)
• O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!“(Matthew 23:37)

God longs for us to choose Him but He will by no means force us. This is the consequence of our freedom and God holds us accountable to choose Him or continue in evil. 

Christian philosophers have long wrestled with how divine goodness and human freedom can coexist. Alvin Plantinga’s Free Will Defense states that God allows free will and therefore can still be omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, and sovereign while allowing people to exercise their ability to make their own decisions. 

C.S. Lewis echoes that God is omnipotent but has intentionally limited His power to grant us the ability of choice. 

• “God has established free will and therefore His power is limited by not being able to force someone to make the right decision– in fact, God frequently allows the wrong decision to be made based on that individual’s right to practice their free will.” 

God shows us through His great risk that love cannot live without choice! A world of obedient robots would be painless but loveless! God chose to allow the possibility of evil for the sake of love. A love for Him and for our neighbor– on this is what stands His whole law (Matthew 22:40)!

As John Peckham captures this beautifully in The Theodicy of Love:

• “God is committed to respecting the free will of humans, what God can bring about will be limited by the free decisions of humans. If God grants free will to us, then how we perform those actions is up to us, not God. If God aims to produce moral good, then He must create free creatures. Thus is the power of an omnipotent God limited by the freedom he confers upon His creatures.”

But what about when God does intervene, like freeing Israel from Egypt or saving Joseph’s family from famine? If He can stop evil sometimes, isn’t He responsible when He doesn’t? These are hard questions we’ll explore in a future post. For now, we see that the existence of evil is not the failure of God’s goodness, but the cost of genuine love.

Peckham continues: 

• “God’s allowance of evil is not moral freedom alone but love, which is perhaps the greatest good in the universe. If “God is love” what value could be greater? Love was the main aim of God in granting free will. “God wanted to create a world in which created rational agents would decide freely to love and obey God. As such, love itself might be God’s “overriding reason for allowing the amount of moral evil that exists in the world. Free will gives creatures the ability to reject God’s love and thus directly or indirectly oppose God’s desire for love. If opposition to God’s desire is evil then love itself requires the possibility of evil.” 

CS Lewis expresses the same truth:

• “Free will is what made evil possible. Why, then, did God give creatures free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata– of creatures that worked like machines– would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His high creatures is happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other.. And for that they must be free.”

The freedom to love has a risk. God chose that risk because to Him our freedom to love is worth any potential evil. 

The cross is the greatest proof of that truth. God entered the pain our freedom caused, bore its cost, and redeemed it. The existence of evil doesn’t disprove God’s goodness; it magnifies the depth of His love.